Various types of mechanical, electro-mechanical, hydraulic, pressurized, chemical, pneumatic and other equipment may be installed by manufacturers, dealers, wholesalers, resellers or other businesses at a customer's desired location. Examples of such equipment may include home elevators, industrial elevators, handicap elevators, specialty elevators, commercial elevators, dumbwaiters, escalators, vertical wheelchair lifts, incline wheelchair lifts, dock levelers, dock lifts, loading docks, industrial lifts, vertical reciprocating conveyors, conveyers, truck restraints, overhead doors, garage doors, high speed doors, HVLS fans, balers, compactors, storefront doors, cart conveyers, coolers doors, freezer doors, heating and air conditioning equipment and others. Although these types of equipment and their individual parts and components may be experimentally tested and rated for a particular lifetime—a length of time the equipment is usable before it is obsolete, breaks or is otherwise retired from common use (such as five years, sixty-thousand uses, etc.)—it is often unknown exactly how long a particular piece of equipment may actually survive in real-world use. Stated another way, the equipment's lifespan may be estimated but not known with a great degree of certainty. Since this process does not use real statistical data based on actual use in the field, in many cases can be incorrect. For instance, a well-maintained and infrequently used residential dumbwaiter may survive significantly longer than an estimated lifespan while a poorly maintained and heavily used hotel dumbwaiter may break long before an estimated lifespan expires. As such, it would be beneficial to accurately monitor the lifespan of equipment including components and parts based on actual usage in the field. This can allow prediction with statistical certainty of when a product must be replaced or repaired before it breaks down. Benefits can range from corporate finance and operations departments having the ability to budget for equipment replacements more accurately and increase up-time for equipment to individual owners not being inconvenienced in their homes and surprised with large repair or replacement bills.
Typically a customer will purchase a piece of equipment, have the equipment installed and then use the equipment as intended. In some instances the customer may have an agreement with a servicer to provide regularly scheduled maintenance for the equipment (such as fixed every ninety days or after an estimated number of usage time in hours, cycles, etc.) and may contact the same entity for broken equipment repair or other emergency maintenance in between scheduled maintenance. When equipment requires emergency maintenance, breaks or otherwise needs fixing the customer may need to contact the servicer and wait for a technician to arrive to diagnose the problem. A common occurrence today is that a technician may not be an expert in the particular equipment he/she is dispatched to diagnose but instead is the only available technician. Once the problem is diagnosed, the customer will need to wait for the technician to order replacement parts. Once the replacement parts are ordered they may need to be shipped to the technician or customer. Once the replacement parts are shipped the customer will wait for the technician to return and install the replacement parts. The emergency maintenance issue may take days, weeks or even months to resolve, all while depriving the customer of the normal use of the equipment. In the case of equipment installed at a business or other enterprise this could mean lost profit and other related problems. As such, the emergency maintenance may cost the customer valuable time, money and other resources before being resolved.
In addition, while some equipment may have manual shutoff and other minimal safety features, they are often not automated in such a way as to protect users from injury when operated in seemingly normal situations. For instance, a child may hide in the bottom of an elevator shaft and could be crushed upon descent of the elevator, even when the elevator is operating normally.
Thus, needs exist for improved techniques by which to proactively monitor equipment health and safety; log equipment status and usage including hours, time, cycles, temperature, humidity, pressure, electrical voltage or current, distance, height, or other relevant information; communicate with customers; dispatch service technicians in times of emergency or for preventative maintenance; and identify trends in equipment health, usage and maintenance that are correlated with equipment and parts breakdowns and product lifetime.